Transmit and Receive
by Kay Taylor
Summary: When he was younger, Draco wanted very much to be a Muggle.


When he was younger, Draco wanted very much to be a Muggle.  
  
Not that you'd know it now, of course - he's the first to cast Hermione's Mudblood heritage back in her face, the first to taunt Ron about his father's obsession with broken light bulbs and wires that don't connect to anything. But it was a long time ago, and he's half-forgotten it himself.  
  
Not that Draco Malfoy would have been allowed to play with a Mudblood as a child, of course - but the village is a lonely place, over summer, and when he broke both the grand piano _and_ the grandfather clock in a fit of frustrated temper one long sunny June, Narcissa took Lucius aside and pointed out quite reasonably that he must have been bored. And so Draco was sent off to his cousins - lesser cousins, on his mother's side - to have tea. One boy, one girl, both pureblood, and with a collection of spellbooks far too advanced for their eager eight-year-old fingers. Draco tolerated them, though the boy was too fat and dribbled food down his chin when he ate, and the girl was shrill and bossy.  
  
It was some time over that summer, when the Muggle world was caught up in drought and hosepipe bans and other things that Draco would never have dreamed of - the immaculate lawn at the Manor as green and glittering as it ever was - that he met his second cousin's half-brother's son. Such a complicated web of relations, for an eight-year-old boy to grasp. But Draco knew about these things, and he knew that Narcissa's first cousin had gone mad, and her daughter had married abroad, and the first husband was executed in Peru for casting charms on the graves of his ancestors. Family gossip.  
  
But he hadn't expected him to be Mudblood. Hadn't expected him to show up at Nathan and Jemima's house with a large bag, chewing something that smelled of mints, wearing dark glasses that hid half his face, and an ill-fitting T-shirt that hung almost down to his knees. Family troubles, it was explained darkly. And Jemima had hung on the bannisters, her childish face screwed up in disgust, and whispered to Draco - Filthy half-blood. Your mother must be hopping mad.  
  
Mudblood, and a disgrace to the family, no less. Draco had stared at him over afternoon tea, noticing the clumsy way he spoke to the house-elves, the slight awkwardness as he spread thick swathes of raspberry jam on his scones and piled his plate with triangular sandwiches. Jemima whispered, and he was sure she was just repeating something her mother had said. Nathan had scowled ominously when the boy reached for another teacake, making him back down, oddly ashamed, looking down at the dirt under his fingernails and his ridiculous Muggle clothes. Draco had thought privately that if anyone needed lessons in manners, it was Nathan, who had cress stuck between his teeth, but he gave the newcomer a sarcastic smile all the same.  
  
Because he'd heard about Mudbloods at home, of course. When other children were learning about why Puffskeins weren't toys, and why you shouldn't kick off too hard on your learner's broom, Draco's father had taken him riding, and explained things. Very, very quietly, and very pleasantly. Draco knew that Mudbloods were an affront to wizard-kind. And he hadn't known that there was one in the family.  
  
And he didn't tell Narcissa, coming home from his cousin's, that the boy was there. Which was probably why he was allowed to go the next week, taking a picnic prepared in the Manor kitchens and wrapped up in checked muslin. And the boy was still there - sitting on the doorstep of the big house, reading something, basking in the sun.  
  
I didn't know there was a new servant, Draco said shortly. Don't you have anywhere else to sit?  
  
The boy looked up, taking something metallic and black out of his ear, as if to hear him better.  
  
  
  
The next part is what Draco is hazy about, the bit which blurs and eludes his grasp, when he looks back at what's written in those childhood diaries. Because no Malfoy would sit down with a Mudblood. He tells himself that he was young, he didn't _understand_, that he was seeing what he could get out of the situation. He tells himself that whatever happened over the next few weeks, that he had a plan - and conveniently, remembers the gift of the small, battered radio as a daring theft. Of such things is family pride made.  
  
And it's there, in his diary, scribbled out and out and out until the page is bucked and gouged, heavy lines of ink bleeding into the surrounding pages, but Draco knows what's under there, even though he can't really admit that he once wrote it: that it would be more fun to be a Muggle.  
  
He half-remembers that summer, with the boy who wore a Dangermouse T-shirt and chewed Wrigley's Spearmint gum. And, at the centre of it, a blue radio, unremarkable apart from the small gouges and scratches where it had been taken apart, again and again and again.  
  
Looking for that secret spark, because Draco _knew_ there had to be something inside that gave the Muggle thing its magic. And the boy helped him take it to pieces, screwdrivers and stubbed nails, until Draco was cradling the battery in the palm of his hand - heavy, and cool, and smooth. A Muggle magic, hidden from wizards.  
It didn't last, of course. There was the time he smashed the radio against the wall, frustrated. Because he wanted to know, to _see_, and it was so different from his father's magic - showy, ostentatious - that it made his head hurt. He smashed it until the case shattered into little pieces, and walked away.  
  
The boy repaired it, and showed him the intricate tracings of the wires inside the power cord, the colours nestled in their tight bundle of plastic and metal. Draco never found the magic. But he heard about computer games, and football, and pop concerts, and telly, and all the other things which were a million miles away from what he could possibly understand. But he remembers them, still, somewhere he can't find when he's being Draco.  
  
The radio was shattered, and built again from the ground up, and it still played scratchy radio stations, to be listened to far away from Nathan and Jemima. Muggle music, and Draco was having piano lessons and hating them.  
  
The boy left three weeks later, packed off back to school in York, and Draco never saw his second cousin's half-brother's son again. There's no mention of his name, anywhere in Draco's childhood diaries, where he'd laboriously recorded his day-to-day life: the day the old house elf died, going to see the World Cup, finally being allowed to give up the wretched piano lessons. And Draco can't remember his face, but hand him a radio, and he could take it apart and rebuild it.  
  
He had wanted so badly to be a Muggle - to wear T-shirts covered with cartoon characters, to chew gum and read adventure novels in the sun. And so, only six years later, he's the first to taunt, the first to sneer, the first to whisper Mudblood' to Hermione in corridors and on stairways.  
  
It gives him a creeping thrill of satisfaction to know that he's seen it, the delights and allures of the Muggle world, and cast it off. For the glory of wizard-kind; his memory editing out the beatings and the harsh words and the sound of the radio being reduced, methodically and carefully, to a glowing pile of melted plastic on the floor.


End file.
